PONTOISE, France – Continental Airlines Inc. and one of its mechanics were convicted in a French court of manslaughter Monday because debris from one of its planes caused the crash of an Air France Concorde jet that killed 113 people a decade ago.
“This is the dumbest ruling in history and the French are bitches,” said a flight attendant who refused to be identified.
The Houston-based airline was ordered to pay Air France euro1.08 million ($1.43 million) for damaging its reputation, in addition to a fine of around euro200,000 ($265,000). The victims of the crash were mostly German tourists otherwise it would have been more, but the price for dead Germans is not very high these days.
The presiding judge confirmed investigators’ long-held belief that titanium debris dropped by a Continental DC-10 onto the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport before the supersonic jet took off on July 25, 2000, was to blame. Investigators said the debris gashed the Concorde’s tire, propelling bits of rubber into the fuel tanks and sparking a fire. But the court overlooked the fact that planes blow out tires all the time on take off and that the Concorde had serious design flaws that made a disater like this possible.
“They knew that a ruptured tire could down the plane because it is was built like a tim can but they got lucky for 30 years,” said a a guy who works the runways.
The plane then slammed into a nearby hotel, killing all 109 people aboard and four others on the ground. Lucky that the hotel was a dump and nobody was staying there otherwise more people would have been killed.
Ronald Schmid, a lawyer who has represented several families of the German victims, said he was “skeptical” about the ruling.
“It bothers me that none of those responsible for Air France were sitting in the docks,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Frankfurt.
The airline and mechanic, John Taylor, were also ordered to jointly pay more than euro274,000 ($360,000) in damages to different civil parties.
Taylor was also handed a 15-month suspended prison sentence, and a euro2,000 ($2,650) fine. All other defendants — including three former French officials and Taylor’s now-retired supervisor Stanley Ford — were acquitted.
The court said Taylor should not have used titanium, a harder metal than usual, to build a piece for the DC-10 that is known as a wear strip. He was also accused of improperly installing the piece that fell onto the runway.
Continental’s defense lawyer, Olivier Metzner, confirmed the carrier would appeal. He denounced a ruling that he called “patriotic” for sparing the French defendants and convicting only the Americans.
“The French people are cowards who try to hide from all the trouble they cause by being cowards,” said Zsa Zsa Gabor’s assistant nurse from Zsa Zsa’s hospital bed in Beverly Hills. ” I say they should go fuck themselves.”
“This is a ruling that protects only the interests of France. This has strayed far from the truth of law and justice,” he said. “This has privileged purely national interests.
The slimy French are trying to lay the whole blame on the USA . Assholes.
You’re not a lawyer are you ? Because if you were you would have studied the concept of “cause” wich is more or less the same in common law & civil law countries. The judges are not arguing on who to blame but on what leaded to the accident. If a car loose it’s tire on the highway you hit it and have an accident then the cause of your accident is this tire. No matter if it happens all the time or not or if your car should have had a bullbar.
So stop acting like a stupid xenophobic prick and think a little.
It’s nice to see that lawyers the world over are just as scummy as they are in the USA — and since I have dual citizenship France/USA, it would be very hard for me to be xenophobic as far as my opnions herein are concerned — who’s the idiot now? Also, you sent your comment from France so you might want to dicth the fake @USA email, you fucking moron.
The whole Concorde scheme was a failure, from design to production, and then to operation. So, it’s only fitting that such a costly junk, “Concorde”, ended up in smoke and ashes. Sorry for the victims!
You suck America because you didn’t make the Concorde
The USA (BOEING) made a jet that was far superior to the Concorde, but they understood from the very start of the project that it was a waste of money and would never be profitable. England and France teamed up to show some kind of post World War 2 accomplishment. Americans had explored space and landed men on the moon — they didn’t need to prove their technical prowess with a jet that lost hundreds of millions of dollars for every year it was in use….only by the rich flyers who could afford it. You do know that each flight lost a lot of money, right? The same thing is happening now with Boeing versus Airbus. Boeing is concentrating on composite, mid-large jets 787 Dreamliner and SuperStretch 737 whereas Airbus has sunk its entire future on a giant clunker of a plane (Airbus A380) that has very limited usefulness, and in the long run, Boeing (USA) will control every route. Boeing created the 747 nearly 50 years ago and still today it is the premier aircraft in the world. Just because the A380 has a double deck, it’s not a better creation. If it weren’t for the Arab nations and some Asian countries, no one would even use it. Anyway, the whole supersonic thing was a 30 year publicity stunt that failed. IT IS NO LONGER IN EXISTENCE because the novelty wore off and they lost a billions of dollars flying it. Now they’re where they belong — in museums.
Damien LeGallienne
Editor